Stonehenge Aotearoa in Video

Here is a little video view of Stonehenge Aotearoa, including a 360 degree view from the obelisk in the centre. The background and the scenery was truly astounding.

Down at the Wairapara

Recently, we went to the lower North island to the Wairapara region, and spent some time in and around Masterton, Carterton, Featherston and Greytown.

It's a stunning part of the country, and showed me why New Zealand is the land of the long white cloud, the cloud literally sits in the mountain tops... like so... and this was in the middle of the day!

 

 

While in the region, we visited Assasi Gardens, built with love by a retired couple over the last 10 years, their dedication is wonderful, and they have an astounding location for their endeavors.

The house is actually built in a semi-circle and has a panoramic view over the valley, a lot of the sculptures they have built themselves and they tend to the garden themselves.

 

And of course, a visit to a winery, we went to Gladstone Vineyeard. The had the nets over the vines as the grapes were almost ready and they didn't want birds taking them away. 

The house on site was lovely and brought in from Masterton, and while we were there they was a display of local artists sculptures - the most intriguing being the bug car.

 

 As interesting as the bug car was - and yes, each individual bug was hand crafted from metal, it had nothing on the 'ghost house'.

This house is on a hill with a lovely outlook east of Greytown, and has been abandoned for 30 years... the owner was going to pull it down, but has decided to let nature take it's course... I'm not sure if this is brilliance or laziness, but it definitely makes for an interesting sight!

Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World - in Video

Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World

Full of Awesome!

Like seriously, an amazing place, I've never been so close to penguins (which was one of the many highlights), the stingray feeding show was very cool and the interactive displays were both interesting and fun.

I'm going to do up a video for this one, just way to many piccies... but here's a few.

The penguin area, which you ride a car on a track around the display, a few of them hooted while we where there, and loudly!

The Stingray Feeding Tank, the person feeding them had the rays pretty much swim over the top of her head in their eagerness to get to the food.

Walking through the fish in the tunnels, they were actually disused sewerage pipes, cleaned out, fixed up and sealed for their new use.

This is Fred... or at least I am calling him Fred, he is a beautiful specimen.
I don't know what Kelly Tarlton's calls him, but I don't think it's dinner.

These are Piranha's, gold, glittery, beautiful fish. Nothing like the way they are portrayed in movies and cartoons.

We enjoyed it so much we bought ourselves season passes. There is a lot to see and take in at Kelly Tarlton's, one visit really isn't quite enough for it.

You know you live in Auckland when...

This is your city skyline,

This is what you have inside your front door.

 

 This is in your lounge room...

and this is your new hobby :)

A Day at the Snowfields - in Video

Just a quick video of the still shots from the day, and a little video. I thought it would be a good way to share them :)

To the Snow!!

So we have our toboggans, our snow jackets, gumboots and snow gloves. Ready for the snow for the first time for the kids, and they are quite excited.

This is the kids on the way to the snow.

Jono with a Knee Rug and his Gloves

Daniel and Sarah with their Gloves

 This is the views going up the mountain.

Overlooking Lake Taupo

The further up the mountain we went, the more the climate changed and the trees and plants with it. They became more stunted, less green, more brown, like with any mountain, there's less air, so the plants have to adapt.

The Changing Vegetation.

 As we were driving up from Taupo side, through a few mountains first with winding roads, and not being sure exactly where the snowfields were, it seemed a long time until we finally saw a small part of a snow capped mountain.

I can see the Snow!!

 Then suddenly we drove around a corner and there it was! Majestic, larger than life, in your face... stunning!

Taken through rain-speckled windscreen

Here's a clearer pic.

A Wonderful Sight!

We spent around 5 hours up on the mountain, and rode a chair lift to the section in Happy Valley for beginners and toboggans. The kids were really amazed by it all, and Daniel even brought a Snowball back with us, which we put in the freezer in the hotel overnight.

The rest of the day I have in video and will put up in the next post... but here's some pics of the kids on the way down the mountain again :)

Jono not quite asleep, not quite awake.

Daniel and Sarah, definitely asleep :)

A wonderful way to see snow for the first time, so glad I took the advice of our friends. Thanks Scott and Anna!! Next time we will check out Snowplanet :)

How to Pronounce...

So far I have found there are many different ways of saying certain words, largely dependent on the thickness of the accent of the person talking, and how close to a traditional Maori background they are.

I am also already being affected by the accent and losing my Aussie 'strine' as my Mum likes to call it.

Today's words: Noel Leeming

It's a shop, much like a JB Hi-Fi or a Harvey Norman, probably most similar to a Clive Peeters in Australia.

At first glance I thought the second word was Lemming - like those rats that faithfully follow each other off cliff faces and such - and I though "How unfortunate", this was also before I found out what it sold.

Then I had my education on the pronunciation. Before I go on, pronounce it yourself, out loud... and see how well you go.

I was on the phone to someone who had a rather pronounced accent, but only on some words. She was telling me I could go to this place "No-eeeming" and I had no clue what they were talking about. I explained I was new to the country and didn't know what it was.. was it a shop? They told me it was and even the second pronunciation of "Knowlleeeeeming" didn't help me much.

It was a few days later before I figured out what they had said and devised the formula for the correct pronunciation of these words.

1) If there is a double consonant, even if it's two seperate words, they must be run together to make one extended word.
2) If there is 2 'e's together, they must be multiplied by 2 and a half to equal 5 'e's when spoken.
3) If at all possible, make the consonant's almost silent when being said, so there is only a hint they were even there.

Practice at home, and you too can sound like a Keywê!

Next week's lesson: How to pronounce Onehunga

A Timber house with a fireplace

There are houses over here that we have not seen before, to my knowledge they don't exist in Australia, at least not in Queensland as the climate is so different and they really are not needed. The home is called a lockwood. They are built in a fashion that literally every piece of timber 'locks' into the next, they are built without nails and are incredibly sturdy.

The kitchen, and the timber... oh, the timber

Ours is around 30 years old and still going strong. When this one was built they left a lot (all) of the interior timber exposed. It got laquered, but not painted or tinted, so on every wall, and every ceiling, of every room on the entire top storey, there is timber. Much like this...


It's a little overwhelming.

So I debate daily, should I paint, should I plasterboard (Gib to the locals), should I put a tinted varnish over what's currently there.. or should I just leave it as is?

The lounge... also timber, & the fireplace with a timber safety guard

I think I'm ok with leaving the roof, but I think I want to change the walls... and update the kitchen... and rip up the carpet, and the broken old tiles... and perhaps change the shower heads, but they are a whole other story.

In the meantime, we also have a fireplace, which seeing as we have arrived in winter we sooooo appreciate, we have it on pretty much every night and bought 5 cubic metres of firewood which will hopefully last us two winters. If not, I 'spose we can always start burning the house ;)

The size of the house is fantastic, we have a lot of room to move and options for renovating. We also have wonderful views over the valley and get simply amazing sunsets. It's nice to be high on a hill with views, even if it's not of the harbour itself... and on a clear day, we can see the skytower!

Arrival!

The lead up to coming to NZ was very intense, we did as much research as we could from Australia in order to make the transition as smooth as possible for all of us. I'll go into more detail on the things we considered during the blog, some of which we could have done a lot more research on, but simply didn't know what we should ask, or who we should be asking.

The plane trip itself went amazingly well. All three kids had a good time and they had their icecream first at lunch time - real NZ icecream - yuuummm! We were very concerned about the flight due to our Autistic boy. I had done a scouting trip around 2 months before we moved for me to view the land and be sure we were happy to move across.

In this trip I visited 3 schools, spent almost 2 hours with the funding team for Jono's schooling, seen half a dozen houses we were interested in buying , had afternoon tea at one friends house and dinner with other friends, went to One Tree Hill, did a Harbour cruise and went up the Skytower. Yes... I was tired when I got home.

The bigger part of that trip was also to have Jonathan with me so the principal's could meet him and we could discuss options of schooling for him if he didn't get funding approval. Unfortunately Jonathan didn't make the trip.

On the scouting trip I took Jono with me to the airport, we had an early flight and I was awake around 4am, we got in the car at 5am and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. He was happy through customs, no problems having breakfast, contented at the entry to the plane, and walked happily along the tube for around the first third of the way.

Prior to this we had done lots of stories about the plane, about the fact that it would land, about going together with Mummy, about the fun it would be... and his response was that planes are scary. I didn't realise just how scary it was for him until we were on the tube.

He froze, he panicked, he cried, he fell to the floor, the fear on his face was so intense, yet I tried to get him on the plane, I ended up bodily carrying him to the door, but he just could not do it. Rob was already in NZ, so I had to do this one myself... and we just couldn't. We got removed from the plane with our luggage as they had to leave and we had already held them up behind schedule.

After a flurry of phone calls I had babysitting for him at home, new flights for me and 4 hours to drive home, re-pack and drive back out to get on the next plane.

So was the first attempted flight... the next flight where we all came as a family we had Jono on some tablets to help calm him and then some extra tablets to sedate him. He fell asleep around 5 minutes before we were due to board and that first deep snore was pure bliss.

He actually woke up once we got him on the plane, but he didn't fight being on it and we made the rest of the trip relatively uneventfully. Fortunately we had some friends at the other end to come and pick us up, in 2 cars for all 6 bodies and their luggage as Grandma came with us to help us settle in.

When we were picking up the luggage off the turntable, we had a sniffer dog fascinated with the kids school bags, likely due to the fact they had school lunches in them the day before, and with Jono wanting to lie on the dog and the distractions from that we missed Sarah's suitcase and had to pick it up a few days later.

On arrival we spent the first few days in a hotel at Lincoln Green while our furniture and belongings cleared customs. We also finally got the chance to see in person the house we had bought to live in, which we had previously only seen on the internet. :)